Policing opportunities and threats in Europe

Abstract

Purpose -This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment. Design/methodology/approach -This study is part of the large EU-funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget. Findings -European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe.Originality/value -A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership.

The role of macro context for the link between technological and organizational change

“…Still, other forces confronted with budget constraints (e.g. in France and Romania; see van den Born et al (2013), this issue) decided against the use of social media or decided for a more restricted form of usage. This suggests that economic threats facilitated organisational adoption decisions, but were not the main triggers.…”

“…To a lesser extent we also found influences of political changes on social media practices. The increasing focus on safety and here specifically cyber-security in, for instance, Belgium, The Netherlands and Spain (see van den Born et al (2013), this issue) created a general acceptance for the broadening of police actions also into the online world.…”

“…In this paper we investigated the role of macro-context for the link between technological and organisational change. Our study was triggered by the observation that police forces across ten European countries varied widely in their judgments about and reactions to current technological trends (see van den Born et al (2013), this issue). Our aim was to obtain a deeper understanding of the factors that lead to disparate paths organisations take despite identical triggers.…”

“…In research we conducted on the role of technology on policing within Europe (Jacobs et al (2013), this issue; van den Born et al (2013), this issue), we found that individuals differed systematically in their judgments about the role of technological developments for their (police) organisations. In Macedonia, for instance, technological developments were seen as very impactful in a positive way.…”

La reforma de la Policía en Europa: Desafíos, debates y alternativas

“…En relación con los actores, los que se perciben como más importantes son, por este orden, el gobierno, los cuerpos judiciales, la ciudadanía, y otras fuerzas de policía. En todos los países se percibe una influencia creciente de los gobiernos, aunque su impacto es moderado (Arjan van den Born et al, 2013).…”